


Change The World

by Natterina



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 23:23:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4764854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Natterina/pseuds/Natterina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lavellan leaves The Inquisition to take over the role of Keeper, and starts to change the Dalish from the inside out, using the knowledge she gained from Solas to ruin his plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Lavellan resigns from her post as Inquisitor a month after the death of Keeper Deshanna.

Solas watches her dreams from the fade, lurking always in the shadows of the trees or around every building she creates in her dreamworld. He is her predator and protector, ensuring her safety whilst stalking her through the darkened woods and empty villages. Lavellan is always aware of his presence, but keeps oddly quiet.

He watches her complete the arduous process of choosing a candidate for her successor –Cullen of course, though she advises that if the Inquisition feels someone better could take the post then they absolutely should- and notices when her dream clothing switches from the well-crafted bed clothes of the Inquisition to soft leathers and furs that befit a Keeper of a Dalish clan.

Solas wonders what she will do.

The Lavellan clan fades from notice, slowly but surely. They had welcomed back their bare-faced First with little hesitation –and yes, some left the Lavellan clan to join others, but most stay loyal to the woman they raised- and vowed to protect her from the bad luck that would surely be dealt to her for associating so intimately with the Dread Wolf.

And so Lavellan works tirelessly. Her devotion to learning more about Elven history is stronger than it ever was before the Inquisition. She drills her new First and instils in her as much knowledge as she can, as much of the truth as is possible. Her hunters scour ruins and take copies of every elven inscription they can find. The elves in her clan are all too willing to help and the elders translate, even if they are dubious about her claims regarding the vallaslin and the gods.

As her knowledge increases, it becomes harder to track down the elven clan. If Solas notices that one by one the members of the clan start to lose their vallaslin, that the young elves which come of age receive it only if they ask, he does not ponder too long for it reminds him too much of that  _awful_  day in the fade when he crushed her heart in his palm.   
  
Solas is thankful that her clan is walking the earth like a ghost. He knows without a shadow of a doubt that if he succeeds in his plan and the elven gods gain a way into  _his_ mind, they will go straight for Lavellan. Falon’Din would drag his blade across her throat before she had even registered the threat.

At the next Arlathvhen Lavellan spreads her truth whilst proudly displaying her bare face and the facts she knows about  _him_ , about the rebellion that started it all. She presents her arguments and backs them up with information she had discovered in her time in the Inquisition, handing up original copies of ancient texts and allowing a dreamer access to her mind to test if she was speaking the truth.

The backlash is  _vehement_ , and the meeting almost breaks down into fighting until she, in all her shining glory with the reason and rationality that made her so successful as Inquisitor, manages to calm everyone down. The talks last over a month, one of the longest periods the Dalish have been together since the fall of the Dales. Lavellan shares her knowledge of the spell to remove the vallaslin should any Keepers wish it –and it is noted by  _many_ \- and the Lavellan clan disappears into the shadows between borders once more.

It is harder to get access to her mind, to  _any_ of the clan members’ minds. One day, he cannot find them at all.

For all the Dalish had gotten wrong, they start to change. It reminds him of the memories he had seen in the fade of the first spreading of human religion amongst elves. In-fighting, discontent, vicious proclamations of who is right and who is wrong.

But then Lavellan does the  _unthinkable._ In the midst of the bickering between clans –for fighting never breaks out, there is too few clans left after the blight and the breach- she outright disappears. The clan’s First rises to Keeper ten years after Lavellan first took up the position, and continues trying to spread the truth. Solas cannot find her  _anywhere_. He worries: his love for her has not faded, it fuels his beating heart and he knows that once he is finished with his task he will try to find her, to beg her forgiveness and tell her the truth. But she is gone.

So when he arrives at a destination several Eluvians away from the Crossroads, where a single Eluvian is concealed on the land bridge between one plane of existence and another, he is horrified to find it shattered with the frame burnt almost beyond repair.

His fury, combined with his recovered strength, is almost enough to destroy the plane. It takes  _hours_ to magically fit the mirror back together, but once it is almost whole Solas realises that four shards the size of his palm are missing.

It is almost a  _test_. He can almost see the smug smirk on Lavellan’s face as she shattered the giant mirror, can almost hear her laugh as she flees through the pathways, having outwitted a god. He was too busy searching Thedas for her consciousness as he worked that he never considered the possibility that she could find his Eluvian.

Solas’ rage is almost physical, the violent crashing of waves on rocks as he leaves the Eluvian’s safe zone and starts his hunt. He will hunt her down and chase her to all corners of every plane of existence if he must; he will not stop until he gets those shards back from her insolent, clever fingers. Solas knows he  _could_ find another way, knows there is another entrance to the plane he locked the Gods in, but this is a challenge and he  _will_ rise to meet it with bloodied teeth if he must.

Lavellan should have known better than to challenge the Dread Wolf.


	2. Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas hunts Lavellan down, eager to regain what she stole from him.

Solas hunts her with the fury of a thousand burning flames.

If he had been told ten years ago that Lavellan, the woman to whom he’d have given the world if he could, would become the object of his ire and the prey in his sights, he would have laughed it off as the most absurd thing imaginable.

Now, he tracks Lavellan to the end of the known world and beyond. Far, far beyond, through planes of existence he had never visited before as the Eluvians open up new areas for the both of them.

In each area he passes through he can hear the tinkling bell of her laughter at the snap of his jaws on her heels. Solas is desperate and  _angry_ , needing to find her and find out _why_. Why would she do this, when he was so close? Why would she take shards of his Eluvian and then flee with them, when he was so close?

 _How_ did she find his eluvian? Lavellan had taken her clan and disappeared off the face of Thedas after changing everything that the Dalish knew. She had changed their world and ensured a new generation of young elves who bore bare faces proudly and shared the knowledge which  _she_ had garnered from him. If he had known it would only take a single Dalish to believe him, he would never have approached their clans as a whole.

But then again, Lavellan wielded her influence that came from saving the world to push forward her beliefs at the Arlathvhen, and found at that event that she had the backing of the considered-missing Hero of Ferelden herself. It was no surprise that the Dalish were changing with those two at the forefront.

Solas is growing tired of her tricks, however. It is ironic that he should be outwitted by a mage who uses the skills he lords over, by a mage who uses trickery and deceit and lies and the darkness to flee from his sight. He is no stranger to the irony, but it grinds his teeth all the same.

Lavellan  _torments_ him. Like a ghost she leads him through one eluvian, only for him to find she had backtracked and entered a different one to throw him off her trail. He is forced to approach each eluvian at each different crossroad with caution, wondering if he was going through the  _right_ one.

In one ruin, which he stumbles into hurriedly,  _certain_ she has passed through here, he is bombarded immediately with the sight of six very old, very  _confused_ elves who have clearly been awakened from uthenera in order to halt him.

As the dread wolf he should continue, chase her whilst he is still only one step behind her, but as Solas he  _knows_ the confusion and pain that comes when one wakes up to find the world gone awry, and he can only imagine  _their_ confusion at a small mortal elf rudely waking them up without any transition before darting off through the other eluvian. It is meant to slow him down, and it works. He helps them for a week before continuing.

However as the dread wolf, fully returned to his strength, Lavellan never has any real chance of staying hidden for long.

When he exits the eluvian and leaves the small cave in which it is hidden, he is hit with the cold and the wind almost immediately. Darkness shrouds whatever plane they are on, and the cold wind bristles silently through the trees. Only the moon and a few lanterns along the road provide any light, and the trees are eerily dark and quiet on either side of the road as he chases his prey.

When he finds her, she looks up from the fire she is tending with small surprise on her features, and immediately attempts to look composed and as though she were expecting him. In the light of the fire he sees the physical changes that twelve years have wrought upon the elf. Lavellan looks older, so much older and hollow after her fight to change the Dalish. The fiery spark has not dulled from her eyes, but her cheeks are sunken and the smile she gives him is almost feral.

He is aware that his own magic crackles in the air around them, popping the lyrium in her blood and likely making Lavellan all the more agitated.

“The shards, Lethallan.” Solas does not admonish her, does not lecture or plead or ask. He demands, with an intimidating tilt to his lips that holds the promise of impatience and violence if she does not comply.

But Lavellan throws his smirk right back at him as she unties a small pouch from her belt and tosses it through the air to him. Solas catches it, feels the weight of it in his hand – _wrong, too light, shaped too roundly_ – and looks up at her with a stare that screeches the question  _you did not dare_.

“Lavellan…” The words are almost strangled as they leave his lips. He unties the pouch and reaches his hand in: the shards have been ground down magically and he finds, to his horror, that he holds a bag of glassy sand. “ _Why_?”

His fury is physical. The fire behind Lavellan snuffs out with a blast of icy wind, and the trees surrounding them curl away in terror. Lavellan stands tall before him, defiance on her face.

“We do not want them back, Solas. If you release them you will start a war that _nobody_ wants. I cannot let you drag my people in to this.”

“It is not your choice to make.” His voice is calm, belying the fury that burns within him and affects the wilderness around them. Lavellan scoffs in disgust.

“Neither is it yours,  _Fen’Harel_.”

Solas will never be able to recall who cast the first spell, but the ensuing fight stops when, in the midst of the ferocious fire that Lavellan commands and the cracked splitting ground that stems from his own magic, Lavellan accidentally leaves herself open and Solas finds he cannot take the opportunity.

Twelve years is a long, long time for a mortal elf, but for him it has passed in the blink of an eye and Solas knows that despite what she has done, he still loves her as much as he had the day he removed her vallaslin and broke her heart. His magic dissipates, extinguishes as her flames die down and Lavellan looks at him in apprehension.

For a moment, the only sound is their heavy breaths in the frigid air. They are worlds apart and yet _so close_. Lavellan watches as Solas tries to stop himself from crumbling and falls to his knees. He wants to kill her, to tear her apart for daring to interrupt and then wreck his first plan to bring back the elven rulers. He wants to kiss her, to hold her close for the first time in years and  _beg_ her forgiveness, enlist her help and try to gain her understanding. But the first he cannot do and it is far too late for the latter, and so he stands stuck in limbo as Lavellan stares on.

Snow crunches under her boots as slowly, as though approaching a wounded animal, Lavellan steps forward with her staff behind her and holds out a hand for him to take. He looks at it warily before taking it, an action that prompts the smallest of frowns on her face.

“I am sorry. But I could not let you do it. My people have suffered enough, and many still bear the vallaslin. We would be the first to suffer if another war broke out. We do not need them, Solas: perhaps you should realise that.”

Solas watches her, eyes glinting in a sorrow he will never admit to. He ponders her words for a moment before shaking his head at her in the darkness.

“Go back to your clan, Keeper Lavellan. You are safe from me.”

Nodding sharply, resigned, Lavellan turns on her heel and makes for the edges of the forest. He watches her go, full of grief at what they have become. The darkness begins to envelope her, but she stops at the edge of his vision and turns slightly to look at him. He is a broken, desperate elf who is trying his best to fix his mistakes, she realises this and pities him for it, but she has no regrets over her actions. He will find another way, she is certain, and she will have to figure it out and prevent it. The game of cat and mouse is not yet over, she suspects.

It feels disjointed, leaving like this. She feels like a bone in her body has repaired itself wrongly, as though she is trying to jam a circle through a square shaped hole. This could just as easily be the last time she ever sees him, but Lavellan has nothing to say. All her questions have been answered over the years, and she owes him no other apology. It feels wrong, but there is no way to make it right.

It is with regret, not for her actions but for the tattered state of their relationship, that Lavellan steps over the tree line and into the darkness. She had once loved Solas with all her being, and he still loves her with all of his, but she does not fit into the picture he is trying to paint and she has no wish to try to insert herself into it. Lavellan whispers her goodbye on the wind, and Solas stares into the darkness until the crackle of her magic and the sound of her boots disappears completely.

“Goodbye, vhenan.”

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the Keeper Lavellan universe, I'll add the next one as a second chapter as it follows on from this. Taken from my tumblr, as I'm moving everything over to here too :)


End file.
